The template approach

The quickest way to change the view template would be to simply change the text in the template. A safer way - strongly recommended, because it will survive a TWiki update - is to create your own custom skin. That may sound like an awful lot of work, but in reality a skin may be as much as 1 file that consists of only a few lines of code.

Example
Let's say you want to simplify the bottom toolbar and remove all links except for "More topic actions". You would need to target %TMPL:DEF{"topicactionbuttons"}%, which is located in view.pattern.tmpl.

The steps you would need:

Think up a name for your skin. Let us use myskin for now.

Create a new (empty) view template file in /templates called view.myskin.tmpl.

Reference: pattern skin template INCLUDE tree

Read-only skin mode

The PatternSkin can be turned into read-only mode. This is mainly useful if you have TWiki application pages or dashboards where you do not want regular users to change content. The read-only mode is enabled with a READONLYSKINMODE preferences setting set to 1 in the Main.TWikiPreferences (site level), in a WebPreferences (web level) or in any topic (page level):

* Set READONLYSKINMODE = 1

If set, the edit and attach buttons on top, and the topic action bar at the bottom are removed. There is a hard to find edit link for people who need to edit content: The topic revision info at the bottom has a dash before the WikiName that is turned into an edit link, such as:

Please note that this is not a replacement for access control, use it in addition to TWikiAccessControl.

Logo

How can I change the web logo?

By default the logo at the top left of each web points to the image with name logo.gif that is attached to each web's WebPreferences.
The default variables that cause this behavior are defined in TWikiPreferences.

Buttons

I want to hide the edit buttons from certain users

It may defy the wiki-ness of your TWiki installation, but in certain circumstances it could be useful to hide the edit buttons from users that are not logged in, for instance for clients that have gotten viewing rights only.

Using either a template or a topic template, 'empty' top:toolbarbuttons and topicaction by writing:

Other page parts

I want to insert text outside of the topic content

PatternSkin has 2 'buckets' to write additional content to: contentheader and contentfooter, both defined in view.pattern.tmpl. These containers can contain text or html and are placed directly before and after the topic text.

Both modules are wrapped in CSS containers:

contentheader - wrapped in div of class twikiContentHeader

contentfooter - wrapped in div of class twikiContentFooter

To put contents before the main text, use the custom skin approach as described above.
So our custom template contains:

%TMPL:INCLUDE{"view"}%
%TMPL:DEF{"contentheader"}%This is the text before%TMPL:END%

Use the same procedure for contents to be put after the topic text:

%TMPL:INCLUDE{"view"}%
%TMPL:DEF{"contentfooter"}%This is the text after%TMPL:END%

I want to place the form at the top

Pattern skin has 2 buckets for the form: formtop (form at the top) and formbottom (form at the bottom). The default definition is: